Frédérique Friess

Guest of the Opera

The French soprano Frédérique Friess hails from Strasbourg, where she studied German literature and philology and concurrently voice at the Conservatoire National de Musique. In 1995, she enrolled at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, where she was taught by Luisa Bosabalian, Carl Davis and Dunja Vejzovic. She further honed her voice skills at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, and attended master classes led by Regina Resnik, Brigitte Fassbaender and Thomas Moser. Her numerous accolades include victory at the “New Voices” Gaetano Fraschini international competition in Pavia, advancing to the semi-final of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and an award at the Hugo Wolf Wettbewerb for songs. Opernwelt magazine nominated her for the best young singer of 2001. Her first engagement brought her to the Hamburgische Staatsoper, where her roles included Marguerite (Gounod: Faust), Zerlina (Mozart: Don Giovanni), Pamina (Mozart: Die Zauberflöte), the titular role in Lehár’s Frasquita, Marie in Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann and Theodora in the German premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s opera Bählamms Fest. She also worked at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim, where she performed Pamina, Serviglia (Mozart: La clemenza di Tito), Despina (Mozart: Così fan tutte), Sophie (Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier) and Venus (Mozart: Ascanio in Alba). Moreover, she was engaged at the Landestheater Niederbayern in Passau, where she sang Tatyana (Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin), the Contessa (Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro), Nina (Massenet: Chérubin) and Desdemona (Verdi: Otello). Since 2011 she has regularly appeared as a guest at the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava, where to date she has portrayed Mimì (Puccini: La bohéme), Elvira (Verdi: Ernani) and the titular role in Schumann’s Genoveva. She has also performed as a guest in opera productions in Paris, Rennes, Palermo, Rome, Venice and Zagreb. Frédérique Friess is an active concert singer too. Since 2006 she has closely collaborated with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart (SWR), with whom she has made recordings of works by Dmitry Shostakovich, Arnold Schönberg and Gustav Mahler. Her recent highlights include performances at the Laiesz Musikhalle in Hamburg under the baton of Christoph Schöner, with the MDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Howard Arman, and at the Europäische Wochen festival in Passau with Basil H. E. Coleman. In the 2013/14 season, she sang Ravel’s Shéhérazade at the Smetana Hall of Prague’s Municipal House opposite the Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Jindra.Update: August 2014